The dreaded issue arose with my son…

Justtochat
Can you explain to me what is transphobic about saying to a child that humans cannot change sex please? I genuinely don’t understand why telling my child something factually true, just like I tell him about gravity or the Big Bang theory?

I have never said trans people should be discriminated against, treated badly and that everyone should be treated with respect whether we agree with their beliefs or not. How is that transphobic? Am I also Islamophobic for telling him what Muslims believe but that I don’t? Or that Hindus and Buddhists believe in reincarnation but I don’t as there’s no evidence to support it? Is that bigoted too?

What you are calling Transphobia is actually Britain leading the way on this issue. Where Britain goes, others will follow.

In fact we have already mentioned to our DS (4 at the time) that some people choose to change their gender.

Did you explain to him what it means to "change their gender"? I'm all ears.

What transphobia? Can you give examples?

Gender is a social construct. Sex is immutable and can't be changed. Children need to be taught that and not be peddled a lie that men can become women and women can become men.

I’m a Brit, living overseas for years, surrounded by people of many nationalities. The level of transphobia in the UK is interesting, to say the least. I don’t see it elsewhere to this extent.

I’d have no problem with trans topics being discussed in school. In fact we have already mentioned to our DS (4 at the time) that some people choose to change their gender.

Factually speaking, some people do choose to change their gender, and since 2004 it has been legally possible in the UK to change their gender.

I know of only 3 trans people in my distant family/friendship/colleague circle. This is a tiny %, and is representative of the overall trans landscape.

So, it happens, it’s legal. Talking about it happening shouldn’t be an issue. It just helps make people more understanding of the topic, which can only be a good thing given how difficult a transition journey can be.

😂

lilyblue5
Thats an interesting comment regarding suicide given that the statistics in the UK don’t back up the often ill informed assertion that trans people have higher suicide rates than the general population and that transition does not appear to change that.

Perhaps you have some new stats available the rest of us aren’t aware of?

"I’m just trying to find a way to explain such complicated information at a level a 9 year old will understand. If I make it too technical he’s just going to switch off."

@HeadAgainstWall0923 I thought the example given above about pets being neutered was a great one.
Ie "do you remember when xyz's puppy had his testicles removed so that he couldn't impregnate other girl puppies?". Did that turn him into a female puppy?

Or they were sad, anxious, abused, had an undiagnosed neuro-diversity....

The current and apparently only acceptable approach is to Affirm Affirm Affirm. Exploration is considered to be 'Conversion therapy'. So instead of asking the confused and distressed children if there are any other issues such as being sexually attracted to the same sex or feeling disgust at the sexual attention they are suddenly subjected to once they start to grow breasts. We are told that we are wrong if we question anything and that instead, we should load the kid up with puberty blockers and find them a surgeon to cut their breasts off, all while celebrating that they are "being their true selves and living their true lives".

It's insane, disgusting and we are already seeing the kids now in their mid twenties who were mutilated and now have body parts missing, life long medical conditions, infertility and a complete lack of sexual function.

My 10 year old sprang something similar on me after hearing about discussions on whether sex in the EQA means bio sex or not was on the news.

We have always been very “anyone can do anything there’s no such thing as boy things or girl things” but he asked what transgender means. I told him it can mean different things currently. That some people like to dress in clothes society says are for the opposite sex and feel that makes them transgender and other people feel like they should have a girl body or a boy body and they have the opposite. Being autistic he took this literally and said ‘I think I am transgender then because I think about what it would be like with a girl body like X (his friend who is a girl).’ We then talked about whether he’d also wondered what it felt like to be our dog or any other person and that helped him see that it’s normal to wonder about what it’s like being someone or something different.

In the end we talked about the fact no one can change their sex or their species regardless of what they wear or do to their body but thats fine because there’s no such thing as girls or boys clothes or men/women’s jobs but that sometimes women and girls and boys and men need spaces away from each other if they are vulnerable or naked because everyone deserves privacy.

This is a good approach

The issue arises when he knows teachers are pretty much lying if they teach gender ideology

I’ll use science in the same way but teachers are in a position of authority and we tend to foster trust with them

I have an example of how this gender identity ideology causes people to split from reality.

A relative who is old enough to know better once said 'ooooh a trans [insert animal species]!' in response to being told about a male animal that had penile cancer and needed to have their cancerous penis removed. The animal's waterworks were also 'rerouted' due to the removal of the tumour and the resulting tissue loss.

So their thought process was:
animal + penile cancer + life saving surgery = human being + trans identity + elective genital surgery

Just explain the xy and xx chromosomes in a simple way, there lots of good websites for biology for kids.

@zeibesaffron 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

I’ve read a few books by trans adults (Elliot Page being the latest) and it seems a lot of them knew when they were very young that they were different in some way.

It’s worth a chat with the school but I’m sure this topic would’ve been covered in an age appropriate way. (Or did your child just overhear something in the playground?)

I personally have no issue with them teaching from a younger age. It can only help children’s understand that we aren’t all exactly the same. They are going to meet a lot of people in their lifetime, especially at secondary and universities where young adults really get a change to experiment and find themselves.

Perhaps all this will eventually lead to lower suicide rates amongst the trans community?

My hair actually looks fab btw, IW & Chums - obvs I had it professionally tidied up after 🙄

Cutting off 4-5 years of length (and associated bleached highlights) has made it really thick and healthy, like young Lady Di!

(or George Michael in the same era 😂)

Because if all us real women cut our hair short, making woman-costumes for men will become much harder? 😃

Are there not better hobbies than spending your time seething in capital letters over imagining some woman, somewhere, cutting her own hair?

Why do all these oddbods care so much about your hair, SpiderMaam?

😂

There are many people in our society that are able to live in a way that they choose so just because you may not agree does not mean to say that a 9 year old cannot hear about it in an age appropriate way.

The appropriate is the key part here.

'People can dress any way they like within the bounds of appropriacy and respect for the situation/others' (has to be added because bloody hell have we seen open mindedness pushed to the stupid point and beyond by exhibitionists, butt monkey being one of the well known examples. Currently presenting man teacher with boobs to the knees and clearly visible nipples another.) 'There is no right way to be a boy or a girl, a boy can dress any way he wants and wear and do whatever he likes, and still be a boy, and it's good to be yourself.'

Fine. Great. Let's wreck those stereotypes. Everyone's body is perfect as it is, and they are perfect as they are.

'Some people have a condition where they are distressed and unable to accept the sex of the body they have, and prefer to dress and have a name or even grown ups change their bodies to look more like the sex they want to be, and it's kind not to point out that this isn't a real change.'

Also fine. With clear limits on how far my child is expected to be kind, and that it is not ok to make other people uncomfortable or remove their privacy or expect other people to give up their normal boundaries rather than jar this preference. There are times and places in which stating reality is necessary if someone is forcing you into it, and it is not wrong to do so.

'Everyone can pick their sex, you can change sex, you can be the opposite sex if you want to, it's all harmless and can be undone at any time including surgery and drugs, sex is a spectrum, homosexuality means you should go by what the person tells you and not what your eyes and body and sexual desire tells you, don't call yourself a girl, it's bad and only nasty people do that, some kinds of people are more important than others and if you're an important kind of person you get to tell other people what language to use and how to treat you and if you're not that important kind of person your job is to shut up and look after the more important people, your parents are old and wrong and stupid and you should break contact with them and go only with online adults who will love and support you much better than the people who raised you ever could, anyone who says no to you says that their reality matters too is a nazi' -

absolutely bloody not fine, and to pretend this isn't part and parcel of it, and what kids are taking away, is naive now to the point of being ridiculous. Adult discomfort with cognitive dissonance is not an excuse to take advantage of children's trust and lack of experience of the world, and to enable a political movement with a lot of unaddressed problems to control 'messaging'.

Sorry I wrote that while doing something else. 🙄🤣

I mean to say the conversation with a 9 year old is much harder not easier than being an atheist at a C of E primary.

When mine were at primary 5 years ago gender identity would not have come up at all. We did home education for a few years too and it never came up there either, there were plenty of boys wearing princess dresses or having long hair but it never occurred to anyone then that that made them girls. I hear that gender identity ideology has become quite prevalent in home education groups now as well as in schools.

What is his understanding of cells and DNA? I'd explained to my son about XX and XY chromosomes from when he was quite young, so he understands that they can't change at all. I've talked to him about all this over the years. He's 10 now and fully understands that sex can't change, he has a sanitised understanding of what the surgeries entail and how taking opposite sex hormones work. He also knows there are only 2 sexes, though some people have been born with different chromosomes which can blur things a bit but they are still male or female.

And he knows that there are physical differences between men and women. So was genuinely outraged when he learned about trans women in women's sports as he instantly understood it to be cheating.

Unfortunately he also, I hope, knows that he shouldn't talk about this with other people until he is older. I've explained that it's a subject that upsets a lot of people and children shouldn't have to be involved in. That if anyone talks to him about it, just try and avoid it and talk it through with me later. Thankfully, I really don't see it happening in his primary school as the principal just seems smart and down to earth. But secondary will be a different matter.

There are many people in our society that are able to live in a way that they choose so just because you may not agree does not mean to say that a 9 year old cannot hear about it in an age appropriate way. I outlined my daughters friends as one has had feelings of wanting to be transgender since 11/12 I am highlighting that the 9yo will probably come across a wide range of you g people at clubs or secondary school very soon and an open conversation is best. I just don’t see why this is such a big deal!!

I still don't think you can compare seventeen year olds with nine year olds. I don't think saying they are going to be at secondary school very soon so let's crack on is a good argument.

Open conversation is great. But not if people are telling them things that aren't true such as if a boy has no penis he is a girl or that they are trying to close down these open conversations with dismissive phrases such as 'I don't see why this is a big deal'.

My atheist eldest went to a Catholic primary - his headteacher cast him as Herod Antipas in the school’s Easter play!